Thermodynamics 101. Energy density:

Petroleum: 15 MJ/kg

TNT: 4.5 MJ/kg

very best battery technology known to man: 0.5-6 MJ/kg

As a power source for transportation, batteries SUCK and are likely to continue sucking.

Solar and wind are problematic because of no practical means of true grid-level storage and this is not likely to change any time soon.

Agreed that burning stuff should not be used, but there is a wonderful alternative that is being held back by politics.

Thorium LFTR. The core tech was proven at Oak Ridge in the 1950s.

Molten-salt Thorium reactors:

1. walk-away safe.

2. cannot be used to make bombs.

3. operate at much lower pressures than uranium reactors.

4. can be made fail-safe.

5. recycling of the process fluids done while the reactor is operating! You don't need to shutdown to clean the fuel.

6. can be used to slowly "burn" existing nuclear waste products such as spent uranium.

7. coupled with a super-critical CO2 turbine system makes much smaller turbines for power generation.

8. waste heat at 600C can be used to desalinate water.

9. Additional waste heat for doing other things like baking bread, heating greenhouses as we go into grand solar minimum.

Steps:

1. build, test pilot plant.

2. build more in factories instead of custom each time.

3. place at coasts to be closer to people and to the ocean for waster desalinization.

4. repeat until everyone has nearly free power and unlimited clean water.

>>556811

super-critical CO2 is a physical state of the gas and has nothing to do with super-critical radioactivity.

we save petroleum for transportation while awaiting new tech.

>>556818

My wife is an engineer. I am an engineer. We have lots of friends who are engineers. We all do math.

I do solar. I know where it fails and how much of a PITA it can be.